Under it, another sheet, handwritten, with some crude facts about Stark.
"Stark is now the operational head of Stockton's spy network."
Stating the obvious. No one started liquidating the competition unless they were already secure in their position.
"He carries a sword."
Who didn't, these days? Thought about pulling his own sword out. As he did several times a week, when he thought the others weren't looking.
"He has a taster for his food . . . He's a psychopath . . . He's been well, practically everywhere and nowhere, if Wyte's seen . . . 11 information was correct.
Nothing solid. Nothing that linked Stark to the case except Bliss saying Stark had asked him about those words they'd found on the scrap of paper. Bellum omnium contra omnes. Wondered what Bliss would've said if he'd shown him the symbol too.
Finch kept a stack of cigars in his desk in a box converted to the purpose. He took one out. Trillian brand. Several years old. Common and popular in its day. A little dry now.
Nothing new in this city. Not whisky. Not cigars. Not people.
The kind of thing his father used to say.
He cut the tip. Used his oil lamp to light it.
The ash was even. The burn slow. He puffed on it, waiting. The congregation will be here soon enough.
His thoughts went back to Wyte's flask. In a flush of inspiration, Finch went over to Blakely's desk, opened the top drawer. Sure enough. Something plum-colored in a bottle. Homemade cork. He pulled it off. Took a whiff. Rotgut, but good enough. Took a couple of swigs right from the bottle. His throat burned. His tongue felt numb.
Saw double for a second. Another puff on the cigar fixed that. Went back to his desk.
Waiting this way, helpless, his vision became apocalyptic, false. In his mind, mortar fire rained down on the city. Artillery belched out a retort. Blasted into walls, sending up gouts of stone and flame. The war raged on, unnoticed by most. He was an agent of neither side. Just in it for himself.
Tried to think past the evening's torment. The walk back to his apartment afterward. In the dark. Thought of who might be waiting.
If he didn't screw up before that.
A little after six, the gray caps began to arrive. The night shift.
The first one pulled aside the curtain. Had emerged from the awful red-fringed hole at the back. Perfect parallel to the memory hole. Only much larger. Finch could see the gray cap's face under the hat. Pulsing. Wriggling. The eyes so yellow. What did they see that he could not?
The gray cap stepped forward, onto the carpet.
In the light of day, on certain streets, Finch could almost pretend that the Rising had never happened. But not here. Not now. Any fantasy was fatal. Any fear.
Finch walked out onto the carpet. Puffing. Feeling the brittle squeeze in his chest even as he released the smoke from his mouth. Let the cigar burn down toward his fingers to feel the distracting pain.
A strong scent of rotting licorice as the gray cap pushed past him. Ignoring him as it sat down at a desk. Gustat's desk.
One.
Nine more. One for each desk. Along with whatever familiars they had decided to bring with them.
Finch wished he had a club. A knife. Anything. The fungal guns didn't work against gray caps. Thought again about the sword. About bringing it across Heretic's rubbery neck.
He drove the image away as irrational. Heretic had asked him to be here. If Heretic ever wanted him dead, he'd send a present to his apartment. Or dissolve him into a puff of spores in front of the other detectives.
Five times he'd stayed after hours. Survived each encounter. But talking to a single gray cap during the day was different from being among many of them after dusk. It brought back memories of the war. It reminded him of night duty in the trenches, the crude defenses House Hoegbotton had created for its soldiers. Sighting through the scope at some pile of rubble opposite. Hoping not to see anything. Feeling the sweat and fear of the others to each side. The flinch and intake of breath at the slightest movement.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Moving past him. Soft rustle of robes. Hushed sigh of their breathing, as if they slept even while awake. Oddly heavy footfalls. A smell that ranged from sweet like syrup to rank and disgusting. Did they control it? Were there signals they gave off humans could never read? Those eyes. That mouth. The ragged claws on the doughy hands.
Sitting at the desks like distorted reflections of their daytime counterparts. He had never learned their names. Thought of them only by the names of the humans who'd been assigned the same desks. Or once had. So there sat Dorn, and there sat Wyte, and there were Skinner and Albin.
The fifth was Heretic. He'd brought something with him. On a leash. Finch didn't know what it was. Couldn't tell where it started or ended. It had no face, just a sense of wet, uncoiling darkness. Like an endless fall off a bridge at night, under a starless sky, into deep water. That one glimpse and Finch never looked at it directly again.
The light in the room had faded to the dark green preferred by the gray caps.
"Do you like my skery, Finch? Do you find my skery pleasing to the eye?" Heretic asked in a voice rough yet reedy, standing in front of Finch. Emphasis on pleasing to the eye. As usual when Heretic tried out a turn of phrase. "No? That's a shame. The skery is a new thing, and useful to us. Very soon, it will save us a lot of effort, allow the Partials to do other work."
Finch had no answer for that.
Together, Finch, the gray cap, and the skery went to his desk. At night, Heretic walked with a kind of effortless forward movement. More at ease and more deadly. As if daylight affected a gray cap's equilibrium.
Heretic sat down, dropping the leash. The skery went right to Finch's memory hole and began worrying the edges with its wet gobble of a mouth. Cleaning it of parasites.
Finch put out his cigar in the ashtray at the edge of the desk. Stood in front of Heretic. Take the initiative. In a calm, flat voice, he said: "I went back to the apartment. The body ... one of the bodies was missing."
"I took it away." A clipped quality behind the moistness. Some continuing thread of amusement. The eyes looked as though embedded in a rubber festival mask. "We're testing the body for a variety of --." The word sounded like tilivirck.
Finch nodded like he understood.
"We also harvested another memory bulb from the man."
Utter paralysis. Unbidden: an image of Sintra's face as he entered her. The way she sighed and relaxed into him. As the blood of his tears dropped onto her cheeks, her lips.
"What did you see?" Finch asked.
Heretic shook his head. A simple motion rendered alien, frightening. "Perhaps you should tell me first, Finch. What you saw."